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Monday, 31 December 2012

When, in Newark in 1902, Franklin Sebastian Rose conceived the idea for his wonderful little aluminium folding portable typewriter, he doubtless would have dreamed of it one day enjoying enormous commercial success. Little could he have imagined, however, what the next 15 years would bring for the machine that was to begin tentative life as the Rose Typewriter, and would first see the light of day in 1907 as the "Standard Folding Type-Bar Visible Writing Typewriter".Frank Rose, who was all for compactness, would have hated such a needlessly long brand name. But he had no control over what Marshman Williams Hazen called the machine. Rose died on May 23, 1905, leaving his widow Catherine Marcley Rose and 26-year-old son George Francis Rose with the task of making his dream a reality. George Rose secured the backing of Hazen and the folding portable went into production in a small loft factory at 2234 8th Avenue, Upper Manhattan. In June 1908 the Rose Typewriter Company moved to a larger loft factory, at 447 West 26th Street.Happily, in 1917, the Corona Typewriter Company of Groton marked the five years since the advent of the Corona 3 by acknowledging this beginning of 10 years earlier:

In September 1907, Typewriter Topics had first described the Standard Folding Typewriter:

With Hazen becoming seriously ill and withdrawing from the enterprise, George Rose went looking for new backers, and found Benn Conger. Typewriter Topics traced the developments in August 1909:

It is interesting to note that the Corona Typewriter Company did not incorporate with the Rose Typewriter Company until 1916:

In 1910 Typewriter Topics devoted three pages to the Groton factory as part of its on-going full coverage of events regarding the Standard Typewriter Company:

'THE CLEVER LITTLE MACHINE'

These curious advertisements will be explained by the following paragraph, which appeared in Typewriter Topics' A Condensed History of the Writing Machine in 1923:

Typewriter Topics continued to follow the progress of the Standard Typewriter Company in 1911:

With the Standard Folding Typewriter and its successor, the Corona 3, leading the way in taking typewriters out of the office and into the home, making typewriting accessible to all, the question of the typewriter truly becoming the successor of the pen was discussed in Typewriter Topics:

So ends our series celebrating the centenary of the Corona 3, right on the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2012.

The launch of the 22-foot James Caird from Elephant Island. The boat that would
carry Ernest Shackleton 800 miles on the open sea to South Georgia.

From Typewriter Topics, 1917

The Corona 3folding portable typewriter left Hobart, Tasmania, on the SY Aurora on Christmas Eve 1914 and arrived in McMurdo Sound on January 15, 1915. It was the typewriter to be used by the Ross Sea Party of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914-17 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Frank Hurley's photograph of the SY Aurora on the edge of the Shackleton ice shelf.

On May 7 Aurora, anchored at the party's Cape Evans headquarters, was wrenched from her moorings during a gale and
prevented from returning by the drift of the ice which carried her far out to
sea. She remained captive in the ice until February 12, 1916, having travelled a
distance of around 1600 miles before escaping and limping to New
Zealand. She carried with her the greater part of the shore party’s fuel,
food rations, clothing and equipment - but not the Corona 3. The little typewriter remained in active service on Ross Island. On January 10, 1917, the repaired and refitted Aurora returned. Shackleton accompanied the
Aurora as a supernumerary officer, having been denied command by the governments
of New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain, which had jointly organised the Ross
Sea Party's relief.

Mackintosh before the mast of the Aurora

Aeneas Lionel Acton Mackintosh (born July 1, 1879, Tirhut, India; died aged 36, May 8, 1916, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica) was leader of the Ross Sea Party. He is commemorated with Mount
Mackintosh, being regarded as one of the
expedition's heroes.

Shackleton

Mackintosh's party at Ross Island

It would be almost 40 years before another portable typewriter was used at Cape Royds, which forms the west extremity of Ross Island, facing on McMurdo Sound. The machine which succeeded the Corona 3 in performing in such extremes was an Empire Aristocrat, used by journalist Geoffrey Lee-Martin, my erstwhile chief-of-staff on The New Zealand Herald in Auckland. This was in
January 1956, when Lee-Martin was covering Sir Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth
Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Prince Alfonso is seen here with his father, King Alfonso XIII, in 1915, two years before the king would give the 10-year-old crown prince a Corona 3 typewriter

Alfonso, Prince of Asturias (Alfonso Pío Cristino Eduardo Francisco
Guillermo Carlos Enrique Eugenio Fernando Antonio Venancio Borbón y Battenberg) was born in Madrid on May 10, 1907, and died in Miami, Florida, on September 6, 1938. He was
an Infante of Spain and the heir-apparent of the throne of Spain from 1907 to
1931. He was the eldest child of the then-reigning king Alfonso XIII of
Spain and his wife Victoria Eugenie. He was the 1120th
Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain and Knight with Collar of the
Order of Charles III. Alfonso renounced his rights to the then-defunct throne to marry a
commoner, Edelmira Ignacia Adriana Sampedro-Robato, in Ouchy on June 21, 1933,
after which Alfonso took the courtesy title Count of Covadonga. He then married Marta Esther
Rocafort-Altuzarra in Havana on July 3, 1937. They divorced on January 8, 1938. He died in a car crash and in 1985 was re-entombed in the Pantheon
of the Princes in El Escorial.

From Typewriter Topics, 1917

TRULY THE TRAVELLING TYPEWRITER

Corona availed of every opportunity to emphasise the folding portable typewriter's groundbreaking suitability for what the Germans call a ReisenSchreibmaschine, a travelling typewriter. We saw in an earlier post Otto Petermann's foldable tripod, particularly favoured by war correspondents when using the Corona 3 in the field. One more handy device came from another Corona mechanical engineer, Charles Henry Bradt (born East Saginaw, Michigan, December 4, 1878; died aged 77, Groton, May 18, 1956). Bradt went further, designing these lap braces for the Corona 3.

The idea is not as silly as it may look. As someone who constantly travelled the world lugging a typewriter in the 1960s and 70s, I would have found it very useful indeed. Correspondents in the Second World War, who often had to use a typewriter while it was perched on their lap, would no doubt have agreed. Typing with a machine on one's knees it not all that easy.

CORONA 3 THE 'BRIDGE OF PEACE' &

THE TYPEWRITER FOR RICH AND POOR

From Typewriter Topics, 1917

Cornelius Vanderbilt IV (born Staten Island, April 30, 1898) served in the Ambulance Service during the First
World War. He became a driver when a general asked the enlisted men if
any of them could drive a Rolls-Royce. Vanderbilt worked as a staff member
of the New York Herald and later The New York Times and in the early 1920s launched several newspapers and tabloids - the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News,
the San Francisco Illustrated Daily Herald and the Miami Tab among them. They didn't last long and cost Vanderbilt nearly $6 million. Vanderbilt subsequently went to work
as an assistant managing editor of the New York Daily Mirror. He was to marry seven times. He died on July 7, 1974, on Staten
Island.

DRIVING FORCE BEHIND CORONA -

'A GREAT TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE'

From Typewriter Topics, 1917

Carleton French Brown (the spelling of his first name is correct here) as seen in the 1953 Smith-Corona News, an issue celebrating "50 Years of Typewriter Manufacture" - starting with L.C.Smith on January 27, 1903.

CORONA JUST KEEPS GROWING

In yesterday's post we mentioned Corona expanding its factory and building 100 new homes in Groton to accommodate a rapidly growing workforce - needed because of massive increases in production to meet international demand. It wasn't enough. The company needed to buy four trucks to transport staff as well.

From Typewriter Topics, 1917

Corona vice-president and major backer Jacob Sloat Fassett (born November 13, 1853, Elmira, New York; died aged 70, April 21, 1924
Vancouver, British Columbia) was a businessman, lawyer and member of
the United States House of Representatives from New York. He died while returning from a business trip to Japan and the Philippines. He was an
investor in various mines, among which was the Oriental Consolidated Mining
Corporation in Korea.

Kia Ora!

Tapping gingerly. Sunday morning, coming down.
Might be my third or fourth attempt to establish a blog. Steeled to make it work this time. All about typewriters. Typewriters in Australia. Ergo, "oz.Typewriter", something a bit different. Please enjoy.